Van Gogh on Demand: China and the Readymade

“Unsettles contemporary art’s unspoken hierarchies and topples modernist and postmodernist assumptions about originality, authenticity, and authorship.” —caa Reviews

In a metropolis in south China lies Dafen, an urban village that houses thousands of workers who paint van Goghs, Da Vincis, Warhols, and other Western masterpieces for the world market, producing an astonishing five million paintings a year. Winnie Wong infiltrated this world, first investigating the work of conceptual artists; then working as a dealer; apprenticing as a painter; surveying wholesalers and retailers in Europe, East Asia and North America; establishing relationships with local leaders; and organizing a conceptual art exhibition for the Shanghai World Expo. The result is Van Gogh on Demand, a fascinating book about a little-known aspect of the global art world—one that sheds surprising light on the workings of art, artists, and individual genius.

Wong describes an art world in which migrant workers, propaganda makers, dealers, and international artists make up a global supply chain of art. She examines how Berlin-based conceptual artist Christian Jankowski, who collaborated with Dafen’s painters to reimagine the Dafen Art Museum, unwittingly appropriated the work of a Hong Kong-based photographer Michael Wolf. She recounts how Liu Ding, a Beijing-based conceptual artist, asked Dafen “assembly-line” painters to perform at the Guangzhou Triennial, styling himself into a Dafen boss. Through such cases, Wong shows how Dafen’s painters force us to reexamine our preconceptions about the role of Chinese workers in redefining global art.

“[A] fantastically detailed exploration of a topic which touches the heart of many of the issues surrounding China's economic rise.” —South China Morning Post

© 2014 The University of Chicago Press (E-bog): 9780226024929

Release date

E-bog: 24. marts 2014